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Copyright © 2011 by Lucky Park Productions, all rights reserved
LUCKY PARK 1841 Dayton Ave. Saint Paul, MN 55104 “Like” us on Facebook
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Album Tracks Life and Death....................................................................5 Pedaling.............................................................................6 What Need Have We of Paris?...........................................7 Take the Worst Thing..........................................................8 What If................................................................................9 Hooray for Dying..............................................................10 If You Go Down................................................................12 Expletives.........................................................................14 Charley.............................................................................16 Consider a Woman...........................................................17 A Man with a Hole............................................................18 Big Ass Angels..................................................................19 The Boards.......................................................................21 The Interview....................................................................22 When It's Not OK to Curse...............................................23 Hey Girl............................................................................24 Instructions for Falling .....................................................25
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Life and Death Death can be wretched, and you strangle for days, or you obtain mercy, blown out with a puff It isn't fair but then what is, every one of us afraid the same, but leaving by a different door, this funny life.
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Pedaling I like being able to climb a hill I didn't think I could and the look on the motorist's face when I come to a stop and I stop Hang in there say the telephone poles the shiny storefronts have your back death may toot its grim ocarina but see the light move through the sycamore
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What Need Have We of Paris? Oh it is undoubtedly great, what with its tin rooftops and horse-chestnut trees, but how can it compare to St. Paul's seven hills wherever they all are and its multiple mini-malls or the birds singing sweetly in spring or the steeple of St. Agnes standing guard like a nun over all?
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Take the Worst Thing that ever happened to you and instead of being destroyed by it make it your cornerstone, build on its power. Find a way to think of it as a wonderful gift, the thing that defines you and sets you apart. Say, if I can survive this and learn from it, I will wake up every day singing.
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What If What if we had lived a different life, in the houses we visited and walked through the rooms, and looked out the windows and smelled the wood. Would we have made different friends, and stayed up late on summer nights, laughing and drinking with them? Would different moments have defined our fate, chance occurrences on other street corners, Would we have grown into different people? Would we have experienced greater success? Would they have brought us closer together or pulled us farther apart? When I bicycle down these streets, the ones we almost moved onto, and I see those bushes and the steps leading up, I remember the smells, and I think about our life, and I wonder. 8
Hooray for Dying Without it we'd be lazy things, unafraid of what the next day brings. We would put things off today because what's the hurry anyway? Our love would mean little, and the world would fill up with us faster than it does. Dying is the redeeming fire. It is the pearl of great price. Dying tells us who we are. It turns out we are just us. It is the source of poignancy. When our adored says no, death rejoices because now it gets all of you.
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It is the cleaner-upper. Scrubbing away the toughest stain. It guarantees relief for every living man. We might never look at one another with tears in our eyes and thus never quite see who we are. It is the stone that sharpens, the flint that makes spark, the buzzer that brings the game to an end. It is the promise of the dark.
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If You Go Down If you go down, if your face actually touches the ground something happens, people loosen your collar and get on the horn for help. Soon a vast and wonderful system is engaged on your behalf because you went down. But your face has to touch the ground and if it doesn't no calls are placed. It's all about the touch, it's all about the feel of face against street, 11
that part is intolerable, and our beautiful idea springs into action with no effort spared which is why I say to you when you fall, really fall, be horizontal, even unconscious and a thousand doctors will reinflate you to the maximum PSI, just don't keep stumbling like so many people do, to your left and to your right, too afraid to go down and admit that it's over.
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Expletives I didn't use to swear so much in the days before Daniele died. I considered it beneath me, ill-considered, crude, a resort resorted to unnecessarily, what with me being a poet and having that great vocabulary. But since then I have felt a kind of peace with ugliness, and the terrible words are always there for me to fling, like rotten fruit lying on the ground so that now, when I scoop them up they are comfortable as new socks or like old friends who meet up again 13
and promise this time to keep in touch because in a dumb world in which we are only allowed to say so much these words have power, like the poker that stirs a dying fire back to life and when I give them the OK sign I release them back into the noxious air, the air that they so perfectly, so satisfactorily describe
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Charley I wanted my son Jon, a smallish kid heading off to school, to feel strong. So I invented a persona for him, Charley, a guy with an attitude, not especially sensitive, the kind that doesn't sweat the small stuff, the kind that acknowledges you by raising his chin, as in Good Time Charlie. When he climbs up the giant steps of the school bus, I'd say to him, “Hey, have a good day, Charley.� It was something just for him, a cool cat. But the driver heard it, and so did the kids. So I learned, twenty years later, that half of his classmates thought his name was Charley, and called him that throughout his elementary years, and being circumspect he never corrected them.
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Consider a Woman If you would have someone to look at dreamily all day a woman is the way to go. Women are so pretty, everything about them is better than a man. They have emotional depth and are capable of wondrous paradox and contradiction They are intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, and slow to violence. In addition to this they are natural multitaskers because we make them do everything.
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A Man with a Hole There was a man with a hole in him that he thought nothing of. When he showed it to people, they said to him, That doesn't look right at all. But don't all men have holes, the man asked. Yes, they said, but you should really have that looked at.
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Big Ass Angels Beauty has always distracted us from the truth. Adam in Eden was misled deceived by Eve's eyes Was she good or did she just look that way -a man never certainly knows. Artists likewise get taken in. Given a choice between naked beauties to base the saints on, and lumpy people from around the town you know which way they're going to go. Women of the world, take heart! From knowledge the masters were blind to, that no one is prettier than anyone else. Did you think that after wading through this life with all the misery caking its sides, that heaven would taunt us with nubile starlets 18
with halos taped to their heads? The eyes tell lies, what we call beauty is just temptation, is just a lie. Help is coming, dearest friends. A bell will sound and all will know what we hoped was true, but could quite believe. We are beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful And then we are beautiful beyond even that. Unpluck the eyes of the peevish heart and all swims into view
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The Boards Be joyful as you climb the steps put spring in your toes and the treetops You are measured out for these sleeves and boxed in by these exigencies God gave you bells so give them a shake let them tinkle to the striking clock Say oh what a fabulous wonderful day as if you were Gordon McCrea
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The Interview “So nice of you to come in,” said the man with the white kerchief. “I just have a few questions about your background.” The interview goes well, until the applicant is stood up against a plaster wall and shot. The bullets penetrate his chest and face. He goes to heaven and there he is again, the man with the kerchief and clipboard. “I know, I know,” he said, confidentially – "Isn't it weird?”
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When It's Not OK to Curse Obtain a conceal/carry permit and when circumstance dictates squeeze off a few rounds It rattles some nerves but is soothing to others Tell them you're honoring the second amendment or do they hate America? Remind them that people don't kill people, it's not even the gun's fault for that matter, blame the world for being aggravating, and also, blame the bullets
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Hey Girl My girl is red hot Your girl ain't doodly squat I know what it is to be loved beyond your worth I know what it is to laugh until you bawl O – I bathed in beauty then I saw the glory pall Hey girl standing in the doorway crying You did your best, I knows
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